Posts Tagged ‘keep drifting fun’

For the MotorMavens Crew, Round Two of the 2011 Formula Drift Championship at Road Atlanta represented a lot of hard work, and about 6 or 7 total hours of sleep for the entire weekend. Since our Associate Editor Jonathan "J-Mac" McWhorter lives in the Atlanta area, he volunteered to be the team leader for the weekend, and coordinated everything for the out-of-state crew members that would be flying in for the event.

Some people may not realize this, but Road Atlanta is a very special place for the MotorMavens Crew. Anyone who knows MotorMavens co-founder Andy Sapp can tell you that he has a very fond place in his heart for Road Atlanta. Even though Andy coined the now famous phraseKeep Drifting Fun, he has been drifting competitively at Formula D events in Atlanta ever since 2004 - the very first event in the Formula Drift series. Ever. Read more...

My 2010 compilation DVD is finally available at Shreeve Films! I’m so excited! This DVD contains 22 videos, all digitally remastered and stuffed onto one disc for you to watch on your bigscreen television with a bucket of popcorn! (more…)

My recent trip to Las Vegas for round 5 of Formula Drift was one of minimal luxuries. Joe Ayala and I could only afford one night in a hotel and a rental car was out of the question. Day one, we got up around noon, grabbed some “breakfast” at the Blueberry Hill next to the hotel, and began our journey to the track at around two. The trek consisted of roughly 2-3 miles, on foot, in 108 degree weather. Luckily for us, we found a shopping cart to carry our backpacks, camera cases, laptop bags, and of course my skateboard. Before long, we had covered the cart in MotorMavens cards (gotta represent) and found fun stuff to do on the way, such as drifting and dirt dropping the cart on the side of Las Vegas Blvd. Joe and I had fun overall, but boy were we glad when an old woman (with a legit mustache) stopped and asked us if we needed a ride. She drove us about a quarter of a mile to the gift shop of Las Vegas Motor Speedway, complaining the whole time about how she would be late to work. Haha!

Anyone will tell you that there’s really no way to describe a trip to FD Vegas other than “hot.” I had a great time making new acquaintances, like when my buddy Josh Herron took us by Forrest Wang‘s shop to BS and look at all his rad cars. I also had fun catching up with friends, like when the amazing Drew Fishbein and Ross Fairfield from OMGDrift let Joe and I stay in their hotel room because 18andFamousAbbitt Wilkerson was too busy napping to answer his door. Haha!

Regarding the video, I apologize for taking so long to finish it. The song I chose has a small introduction that requires specific footage to go with the audio. Hobo and I had arranged beforehand to film what I needed while in Vegas. Unfortunately, the lovely security team at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was very strict about when and who could drive in or out of the gates, so we just couldn’t make it happen. That being said, I had to acquire the help of up-and-coming photographer, videographer, actor, and stunt driver Joe Ayala to finish the timeline.

Special thanks to Jason at ContourHD for hooking us up with the cameras. These things are a blast to use! Definitely one of the most fun moments of the trip was running around the grid, sticking cameras on cars. Thanks again!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAhahahahahahhaha Right now it’s almost 3:00am Pacific Standard Time, and I’m getting ready to go to Formula D Las Vegas. At the same time, I’ve been working with our Art Director/Webmaster extraordinaireAndy Sapp on choosing layout options for a cool client project that we’ll be revealing on MotorMavens very soon.

We’re kind of stumped on what to do right now, so I thought I’d cruise through his personal blog and see if any good ideas popped into my head. Suddenly, I stumbled upon this photo, which seriously had me laughing out loud. Dude. I think this photo is HELLA funny! If you read through Andy’s blog, he was writing about how he was washing his E46 before Formula D Atlanta, and then got into a friendly water balloon fight with some of the neighborhood kids… but damn! It looks to me like the neighborhood kids won this particular round!

I especially LOVE the expression on the kid’s face. It looks like in his head, he’s thinking, “Boo-yaaaa! Take THAT, sucka!” LOL! (Sorry Andy. This was just too hilarious for me NOT to share.)

There are so many cool aspects of being a part of MotorMavens but, to me, one of the coolest is witnessing the heart and passion of the automotive industry through the eyes of the ones who live and breathe it - the true mavens. We here at MotorMavens consider ourselves to be in that number as well but we're not here to tell our own story. Our vision has always been to showcase your story - your passion. Seeing this industry through the innovative eyes of guys like Roland Gallagher, Justin Shreeve, Lucas Perez, Yuta Akaishi, Daniel Bridle, Yoshi Shindo and all of the many others who love and live what they do (including you) - that's our way of keeping our eyes glued to the real motivating force behind the stats.

That's why this story by Jonathan McWhorter was so compelling to me. It's not about the money or the fame. It's not about your company budget or your connections. It's not even how long you've been in the industry. Those are not the things that make this industry so awesome. I could tell you but Jon did such a great job - I'll leave it in his capable hands. After all, he reminded me. So, without further ado... Read more...

When I clicked through to watch the video, it looked like a great mash up of footage from both video shooters, featuring one of the secret Drift Mechaniks drifting practice days at Nashville Super Speedway! Very cool! It even features some footy of our own art director Andy Sapp, who looks like his face is being overrun by a forest of facial hair, haha! It was pretty cool to see MotorMavens stickers on the Drift Mechaniks cars in the video! So make sure to watch all the Drift Mechaniks in this video and see how Andy gets down when he’s not designing stuff on his Mac! I just lovvvvve the way his E46 BMW looks with those ultra baller steez Racing Dynamics wheels!

Big ups to Drift Mechaniks, and big ups to Will and Josh! I’m sure you might already know this, but the dynamic bearded duo of Roegge and Herron are now traveling cross country in a van, filming videos (No, notTHOSE types of videos. Although I’m sure our boy Josh is super down. He even has POV equipment.) for the newest video project they’re working on!

So enjoy the re-run of this video on our site, and in the immortal words of Andy Sapp, “Keep Drifting Fun! …Or Else.”

Will Roegge and Joshua Herron are combining their killer creative talents to produce a DVD about American grassroots drifting, called Keep Drifting Fun! These two filmmakers have upped the ante on automotive video content ever since their visually stunning, yet technically precise work hit the web. To hear that they are joining forces to tackle this project is definitely exciting.

This news is of particular interest to me, because the last time this sort of project was attempted was in late 2006, for a project near and dear to my heart, called Slide America. Needless to say, I am pretty pumped to see something like this come together again, and I could not think of a better duo to pull it off.